


a veil of great surprises

by vesperics



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Draco Malfoy, Auror Harry Potter, Auror Hermione Granger, Auror Ron Weasley, Character Death, Co-workers, Dark, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Forced Collaboration, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, POV Hermione Granger, Post-Hogwarts, Slow Burn, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:49:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28929054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vesperics/pseuds/vesperics
Summary: Malfoy looks at her and it’s different than a glance, different than a once-over. His eyes find her directly. They’re darker than usual and they flick away almost immediately, as quickly as he strides away from the tacked parchment and out of the room.Her heartbeat jumps to her throat. She stumbles forward, pushes past the other trainees without caring where her elbows land. She needs to see, she needs to know why he looked at her like that—Halfway down the list of trainee partner assignments, she finds her name:Granger, H. and Malfoy, D.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy, Theodore Nott/Harry Potter
Comments: 31
Kudos: 91





	1. omne initium difficile est

_every beginning is difficult._

* * *

They pass over Kingsley Shacklebolt and Hermione considers that maybe nothing has changed.

The new Minister for Magic is someone named Benton Criminger. She goes with Ron and Harry to his induction, shakes his hand in front of a crowd of multicolored robes and smiles her way through a dozen or so photographs that will undoubtedly make the Prophet. She’s grateful she’s picked the dress she did—it’s conservative, but the periwinkle-blue complements her skin well, the fabric shines enough to distract from the wayward mess that is her hair.

“I’m thrilled to be stepping into this position,” Criminger says at some point during the ceremony, his wand at his throat, a dull Sonorus casting his voice across the Atrium. “Thrilled under the circumstances. A new Ministry, and a cleansed nation.”

She doesn’t like that word. _Cleansed._ Already, there’s a bad taste in her mouth, but she hasn’t pieced it all together yet.

Kingsley’s wavering in the back of the crowd. Hermione approaches him after the speeches.

“I don’t understand,” she says in lieu of a greeting. “I thought—this should’ve been you.”

Kingsley looks at her and his features are war-worn, tired and lined with years of fight. It would be a good look on a leader, she thinks. A promise of experience, of worldliness. Criminger is all smooth lines, straight teeth.

But Kingsley doesn’t look like a leader anymore—or he isn’t trying to. He only looks jaded, the slope of his shoulders somber instead of noble.

He says, in a low, detached voice: “I’m retiring.”

“Surely not,” she replies.

He grimaces. Shakes his head. “It was a pleasure working with you, Hermione.”

She recognizes the dismissal. Still, she lingers in front of him, rocks unsteadily on her feet. She’s thinking up something more to say. Something like, _We could keep working together._ Something like, _Criminger won’t last._

“It’s a celebration. Don’t keep your friends waiting,” Kingsley says before she can get another word in, and then turns and walks away because she will not.

Dazed, she finds her way back to Harry and Ron, both of them holding sparkling glasses of champagne, looking only at each other instead of the masses of Ministry officials, of other pockmarked war heroes, of the grandeur and breadth of the event.

“Something’s wrong,” she says, sidling next to Ron.

Ron wraps his free arm around her waist and pulls her closer. “You worry so much,” he murmurs against her hair. “Do you want me to grab you a drink?”

“Ron, I—”

“Aren’t things good, ‘Mione?” he asks her.

Hermione nods, because things are good. She’s always had a knack for casting shadows on things that look like gold to Harry and Ron, but surely even she can refrain from doubting for a moment, for this moment. The war is over. The three of them made it through. They won, they won, they won.

“Yeah,” she whispers, and leans into his touch. “Things are good.”

* * *

She should’ve realized.

She should’ve realized, as soon as things ended but nothing stopped. Not the thin thrum of panic beneath her skin, not the constant roar of worry for her friends, not the dread. Not the grief.

They go to the trials and talk when they have things to say, sit and watch when they don’t. It lasts weeks. Ron develops a chronic yawn and Harry still won’t sleep, he’s up at least an hour before Hermione every day and tells her every night at Grimmauld that he won’t go to bed until he’s done “thinking”.

They look every Death Eater in the eye as their sentences are doled out.

“Congratulations,” Corban Yaxley says from his seat at the base of the courtroom, bared before the Wizengamot. There are fetters around his wrists that slink down into the stone floor, along with a dozen or so enchantments to keep him subdued, restrained. “You’ve got the Death Eaters. You’ve got the Inner Circle.”

“Mr. Yaxley—”

“What are you going to do about the rest of them?”

The magistrate stills. “The rest of them?”

“Not every follower had the Mark.”

“Would you like to provide names, Yaxley? If this is a ploy to weaken your sentence—”

“I’ll give you nothing.” Yaxley smiles. His lips stretch white across his teeth. “I’ll watch from my cell.”

Later, in the dim corridors of the DMLE, Ron says, “He was just talking, right?”

Harry’s eyes are glazed over. He gets like this after each trial: withdrawn, pensive. It’s draining him to relieve every beat of the War, to talk in detached words about every run-in he had with the accused.

Hermione places a hand on his arm and tries not to care that he doesn’t look back at her.

“Of course it’s just talk,” she says. “You’ve seen how many trials they’ve got lined up. They’ve got them all, Ron.”

After the first cycle of trials—all the adults, the pronounced Death Eaters—come the kids: Nott, Parkinson, Goyle, Warrington, Montague.  
Malfoy.

Three of them have the Mark: Malfoy, Nott, and Goyle. The rest are sidled with evidence regarding acts of persecution, violence, and personal presentation at “officious dark congregations”.

None of them smile like Yaxley did. Goyle seems the most composed, but Hermione’s not sure if that’s attributed to poise or the Slytherin’s simple steel-headedness. Warrington and Montague sweat noticeably through the testimonies. Parkinson glares at the Chief Warlock but answers every question in a hoarse voice more ambivalent than is usually within her character. Nott has deep circles beneath his eyes and flinches when someone in the Wizengamot speaks too quickly, or too sharply.

Malfoy looks thin. The angles of him are sharper than Hermione remembers. The pale shades of his hair, his skin, are dulled by the courtroom light.

All three of them—Hermione, Harry, and Ron—offer testimonies for his trial. Harry talks about the Astronomy Tower in distant, irresolute tones— _He lowered his wand._ Hermione talks about the Manor. Ron holds her hand.

Malfoy never looks at a single one of them.

Watching their examinations is different from the rest. Hermione can’t help but pull forward images of each of them from her early days at Hogwarts, rounded-out features, colorful and vital. It makes her angrier, somehow, to think that they were once a kid like she was and still, in the span of only a handful of years, became criminals. Became fueled by hatred.

Every last one of them confesses their guilt.

Every last one of them is released.

She doesn’t want death. She doesn’t want any more suffering.

But _damn it,_ she had hoped for justice.

And this feels like something different.

* * *

“Where do you see yourself in five years?”

She’s sitting in a Ministry office belonging to Maya McGruder, Head of Office of Misinformation for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.

Hermione’s already been accepted into a small entry position. She’s happy to start where they need her. Happy to be there at all, with the accelerated, distance-coordinated N.E.W.T.s she’ still not entirely satisfied with.

Only—she can’t shake the feeling that they’re trying to figure out what to do with her.

“I have my eye on the Being Division,” Hermione admits. “But, if I’m being honest, I think there’s more I can do within the Department.”

McGruder offers her a tight-lipped smile. She taps her quill against the parchment on her desk, pooling the ink into its tip. “What do you have in mind?”

“A broader liaison office,” Hermione answers. “There’s the Goblin and the Centaur divisions, but I can’t help but think there’s too much compartmentalization with the intermediary services, and a unified office could—”

“Miss Granger.” McGruder’s smile twitches. “I said five years. Not twenty.”

Hermione catches her breath. “Well. Yes—I understand that’s a bit ambitious.” She lets out a small, airy chuckle that sounds a little more shaky than she intends. “I guess—I don’t know. I might as well aim high, and if I can’t land where I want right away, I can still land somewhere where I’m happy.”

“You know, Miss Granger, your talents precede you. We’re eager to have you here. We are.”

Hermione senses a build-up. She keeps still in her chair, waiting.

“The Ministry has been in a state of overhaul since the War. We’ve been hiring like crazy. There are eleven new employees your age in this department alone.” McGruder cocks her head to the side, narrowing her dark-rimmed eyes. “All I mean to impress upon you is that you’re not isolated in your ambition.”

Hermione feels like she’s been chastised. She curls her fingers around her knees, starts picking at the hem of her skirt—it’s a nervous tick she picked up during the trials when she had to wear something nice every day. A way of unravelling at the veneer.

McGruder taps her quill two, three times against the parchment, as if punctuating her thoughts. “Just this morning, I had quite the conversation with a Tabitha Bainbridge. Do you remember her, from school?”

All Hermione remembers is that Bainbridge is pure-blood, that she used to boast about her father’s position in the Ministry loud enough to be heard from the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall—

And there it is again. That taste in her mouth.

“A better conversation than this one, you mean?” she asks, point-blank.

McGruder smiles again. “Take some time to think about short-term goals, Miss Granger. We’d love to see you apply your enthusiasm to things within reach.”

Hermione leaves McGruder’s office and returns to the broad chamber of the department. She arrives at the desk she’s been given, one of twenty, identical and arranged in neat rows beneath the higher-level offices.

She closes her eyes and lays a hand against the wood. The air smells sterile and cold, the desk is empty, she doesn’t even have a nameplate, and there’s nowhere else, there’s nowhere to go—

An idea flickers behind her eyelids.

 _Not too late,_ she thinks suddenly. _It’s not too late._

She’s moving before she can convince herself otherwise. Carefully-laid agendums aren’t in her repertoire anymore. The war’s over. She’s allowed to be impulsive, now. She’s allowed to chase what she wants.

The DMLE is two levels away. She barely feels the whir of interdepartmental memos around her head as she waits in the lift. The doors open on level two, and she’s springing out, her flats staccato-drumming against the marble floor.

She passes Ron in the corridor. His eyes go wide, and he steps towards her instinctively.

“Hermione, what—”

“One minute, Ron,” she says without stopping.

She knows where to go. The thought crosses her mind, in a brief moment of desperate, frenzied humor, that she might know more about the Ministry than Criminger does.

She finds the office. She knocks.

Gawain Robards opens the door.

“Hermione Granger,” he says, eyebrows shooting upwards. “What can I—”

“When’s the next training cycle?”

“For—for the RCMC? I’m not sure I’m—”

“No.” Hermione lifts her chin and fixes her gaze, unblinking, on the Department Head.

“For becoming an Auror.”


	2. si vis pacem, para bellum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic now has a trailer/edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rLDwLOjqJs&t=58s
> 
> Check it out if you're interested :)

_if you wish for peace, prepare for war._

* * *

It’s the start of things ending, for her and Ron.

Robards lets her in the same cycle as him and Harry and, after a brief, awkward withdrawal from the RCMC, she’s fully established as Trainee Granger. There’s an article in the Prophet about it that she doesn’t read. Nothing matters to her beyond what Harry and Ron think, and the two of them reach a rather hasty consensus:

She might be a little bit insane.

“What happened to House-elf liberation?” Ron asks her. “‘Mione, I mean—you were going to be the next Minister.”

“I’m doing what I need to do,” she replies coolly. “Right now.”

This idea that she’s meant for rapid ascendancy like that, that any one of them is obligated to a rise in ranks, is a long-lost reverie. She knows that now. She understands.

“You know that it’s always the three of us. No matter where any of us are.”

“Can you believe,” she says, fiercer than she intends, “just for a moment, that I’m doing this for _myself?”_

Ron doesn’t seem to know what to say to that. He blinks, opens and closes his mouth, working for something else to say.

After a moment, he reaches out to her. She lets him, folds herself into the crook of his elbow.

“Of course you are,” he speaks finally.

He does not say that it makes him happy. He does not say that he understands. The omitted words are not lost on her. She fills them in for herself, writes the conversation over in her head.

_It’s the three of us because it makes sense that way._

This _makes sense._

_This is not a leap, not a dive. It’s an imperative._

She smiles into Ron’s shoulder.

It’s a lot of dueling, at first. Rounds and rotations among all the trainees. Fabricated action. Hermione’s been admitted late, but even if she had started the program on time, she thinks she would still be stumbling through.

Her first time being paired with Ron, he reminds her easily what he thinks of the practice.

“I’ll go easy on you,” he murmurs, and they’re an echo of their fifteen year-old selves, bullheaded and naive.

Even then, Hermione had burned.

She has him on his back in two minutes.

They move. Rotate. Ron doesn’t meet her eye again after he pushes himself from the floor but across from her, Harry watches her carefully.

“Harry,” she says lowly, “don’t you _dare_ hold back.”

His eyes widen a little but he nods, takes his stance at the appropriate distance. Lifts his repaired stem of holly into the air.

They’re both moving as soon as the bell rings. The room is filled with flashes of colored light, with the flurried sparks of connecting spells, and their fight is no different.

Only, it doesn’t end.

The bell rings again and they’re still going. Hermione is twisting her wand-arm so rapidly she’s beginning to feel the muscles cramp and seize, but she forces on. Harry’s face is solid and impassive, but there’s a curled line in between his eyebrows and Hermione can see his focus, can nearly feel it.

It’s a drawn-out clash of blue-white-red between them. Sweat starts to bead at the base of her neck, down the line of her back.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, a thought snarks that Harry’s finally learned beyond _Expelliarmus._

She’s aware of the rest of the trainees, paused in the rotation and watching them in silence. Harry’s always made it clear that he hates the attention, but he’s giving them a show, now, of how much he’s learned in his years of premature tragedy and doom, and Hermione’s doing her best to match him.

He hits her, finally, with a jinx that throws her legs out from underneath her. She lets go of her wand and gives in to the fall. Everyone watching turns away, the reverie broken, and they begin to trail out of the space for their scheduled break.

Her back is on the floor of the training room and her chest is heaving, up and down.

Harry lays himself down next to her, halfway to spread-eagle, his fingers brushing hers. Ron flops down at their feet. Other trainees sidestep around them, nonplussed by their lolling bodies.

The air smells like sweat and the faint ozone-haze of spent magic. Hermione inhales deeply.

“You all right?”

She lets her head fall to the side and looks at Harry, his cheeks flushed and his eyes half-shut. She says, “Yeah,” and realizes it’s the truth.

“I still think this is strange for you, ‘Mione,” Ron says below them.

Harry hums his agreement.

Hermione closes her eyes and swallows back a retort. She’s working as hard as they are. She’s pushing herself. It’ll all pay off, soon.

And when written exams start becoming a regular occurrence, she thinks that Harry and Ron will change their opinion.

* * *

She’s deeper in the Ministry than she’s ever been before, break-ins and battles considered.

There are chambers and tunnels she can’t fathom the stretch of. She wonders which bit of London they’re all beneath, if there are train rails or footsteps above their heads.

It’s some simulation of conflict, some way to force them into action beyond the sterile background of the training rooms in the DMLE. Here, they’re disoriented, they’re misplaced. Beyond the unfamiliarity of the tunnels, there’s the dimness, the press of fear. The isolation.

The goal is simple: find your way out.

Her eyes have adjusted somewhat to the dark since she was deposited in a nook within the tunnels half an hour ago. She keeps one hand pressed against the smooth stone walls as she moves, wand gripped tight in the other.

All Garbuzov, the Trainee Director, had specified was that there would be “obstacles”. So far, she hasn’t confronted anything apart from her own nerves — and the tightly-wrung anticipation for more.

Until something warm and solid knocks against her arm and she startles backwards, only just managing to keep back the urge to squeal at the contact. When, after a beat of silence, she’s not accosted further, she squints into the shadows.

“Ron?” she ventures. She can hear the soft puffs of breaths from what she hopes is another trainee.

“It’s Cho.” The contact withdraws, and suddenly a voice whispers, _“Lumos.”_

Lit by the white-blue glow of the spell, Cho Chang smiles weakly at Hermione.

She entered the program alongside Harry and Ron. Hermione was both surprised and disconcerted to hear it — distraught at her own lack of knowledge about the girl. For someone Harry had been so fixated on for several years, Hermione knew very little about her aspirations.

“Cho.” Hermione swallows. “Right. Good to see you.”

“You weren’t using light either,” Cho observes.

“I don’t know what’s waiting for us down here. Thought I’d go with stealth.”

“Well.” Cho smiles, then lets the light at the tip of her wand fade out. “In the field, we’d have partners, wouldn’t we?”

Hermione lets out a breath of relief and lets Cho grab hold of the crook of her elbow. Together, they keep moving, slipping back into the shadows.

“It’s—it’s a little early for these kinds of things, don’t you think?” Cho whispers. “I knew training would be intense, but this is a bit much.”

“I don’t know,” Hermione whispers back. “There’s no real danger here. We’re still in the Ministry.”

Something in her falters at her own words. She doesn’t have time to stop and parse it before there’s a rattling noise to their left, and alarm flares bright within her.

“What—”

It stretches around them before Hermione can get a full sentence out. She triggers a _Lumos_ and Cho does the same, and around them both, walls of leaves rustle green and shadowed.

Hermione frowns. That’s all that’s there. _Leaves._ But they’ve sprouted from nothing, and she can no longer see the stone of the tunnel they’re in.

She turns to Cho, a question poised on her lips, but stills as soon as she catches her expression. Cho’s eyes are wide, lips parted, and the outstretched hand that holds her wand is shaking in the air.

“It’s a boggart,” Cho murmurs, unblinking.

The leaves rustle around them, and Hermione realizes—

A hedge maze. The Third Task. The _Tournament._

“It’s all right, Cho,” she says. She turns to face the wall of green and lifts her own wand higher, poised to direct the right spell.

The leaves rustle again. There’s something moving within. Hermione hesitates.

After a beat of heavy silence, she can see the light of a face, embedded within the hedge. A figure moves closer, the blue light of their wands hitting first its nose, chin, the stretch of its shoulders.

It’s Criminger. The Minister.

It’s not Cho’s fear, she knows, but she can’t place why it must be her own. She still doesn’t move, letting her thoughts race, scrambling for comprehension.

But Criminger’s eyes glint in the darkness, and they shine red, just like—

_“Riddikulus!”_

Criminger disappears into the shadows. The leaves rustle, quiver, then begin to fall, as if each simultaneously released from their stems. In the air, they turn into flakes of snow. Several land, light and wet, on Hermione’s outstretched arm.

The tunnel is cleared. Cho exhales heavily next to her.

“Thanks,” Hermione says, a little unsteady.

Cho nods. “It’s just—just a boggart. Let’s keep moving.”

They find their way out after an hour. There are no more boggarts, but the two of them struggle past a veil charmed to trigger unpleasant memories, a poltergeist, a puzzle of runes to work open the door that promises liberation.

Back in the DMLE, all of the trainees gathered and drained, Garbuzov starts talking about fear and calculation, and Hermione doesn’t listen. She finds Ron and stands by his side. She doesn’t reach out to touch him.

She looks down at the small quiver in her fingers, and she thinks.

* * *

They’re brought in by Dawlish himself.

Hermione is curled against the wall of the main office, the Auror Training Manual open in her lap, when they arrive. She looks up in time to see Dawlish’s arms hooked around both of them, ushering them forward.

At first, Hermione thinks it’s Auror business in the sense of enforcement. That Malfoy and Nott are here because they’re suspects, because they’re relevant to a case, or because their status as recently-released criminals requires check-ins of some sort.

But Dawlish withdraws his arms and the two of them stand there, unguarded, untethered, and Hermione begins to realize that there’s something else going on.

“Trainees,” Dawlish says in his loud, assertive voice, “if I could get your attention, please.”

Ron and Harry aren’t far, and they step closer to where Hermione sits. Harry leans against the wall behind her and Ron props himself at an angle against a nearby desk.

“What are _they_ doing here?” Ron asks.

Hermione shakes her head, at a loss.

“Trainees,” Dawlish says again, “we’ve already established that this training cycle is a tad atypical.”

Several sets of eyes in the room drift over to where Hermione, Harry, and Ron all linger.

“It’ll only get more so. We’re admitting two more trainees into the program — the last, I assure you.”

The trainees begin to murmur. Hermione can’t make out any distinct conversation, but the tone of the voices in the air is dark, skeptical.

Hermione meets Malfoy’s eyes. He looks brighter than he did in the Wizengamot courtroom, several months ago, but still more dishevelled than she had known him to be at school. The press of his shirt, his cloak, is all neat and clean, but the shades of dark gray wash him out, contrast angrily with the pale span of his skin and hair. And the under-eye circles — they’re still there, still deep and bruise-like.

He looks away.

Hermione decides abruptly that he hasn’t changed. He can’t have.

And — he wants to become an _Auror?_

“If you have concerns regarding this change, bring them directly to me, Garbuzov, or Robards himself. If not—” Dawlish tilts his chin down, slides his cool gaze across the room “—then I expect you to maintain your focus on the program.”

It made sense, she thinks, for her to join a little late. It’s not a little late anymore. They’ve had weeks of training that new recruits couldn’t hope to catch up on.

But Malfoy and Nott both stare down the room like the whispering trainees are a challenge, and neither of them shows a single sign of objection to Dawlish’s words.

Hermione wraps her arms tighter around the manual in her lap.

Ron mutters, pitched low so only Harry and Hermione can hear:

_“Here we go.”_

* * *

One day, when she leans into Ron, he turns his cheek. Her lips catch the edge of his jaw instead of his mouth.

She feels it like a slap to the face.

“What’s wrong?” she demands, pulling back.

They’re in the dining room of Grimmauld Place. Her and Crookshanks have been staying with Harry since the trials. Since a bit before, too — after she had returned from Australia, where her parents still believed they were Wendell and Monica Wilkins, where every effort Hermione made to restore their memories went up in flames, where she had to take from their minds _again_ because she couldn’t let them keep the memories of her waving her wand in front of them, of her pink, tear-smeared cheeks, of her pleas for conciliation.

Ron practically lives in the London house, too, returning to the Burrow only on the weekends. All three of them developed a habit of sleeping near each other. Sometimes, they ignore the several beds of the house and curl up together in the drawing room, and she can sleep with Ron’s hand pressed against her own, like she had during their beginning days of being on the run, the stress-streaked stretch of time after Bill and Fleur’s wedding.

Ron grimaces. He can’t meet her eyes. “It doesn’t feel like you, Hermione.”

“That’s strange. Because it’s me, Ron. Same as ever.”

He shakes his head. “I just — I mean, this whole Auror thing. You’re not yourself when we’re there.”

She can feel the indignation start to spark within her. Heat rushes to her neck, to her head, and she fights to keep her voice steady. “What do you mean?”

Ron looks at her, then. His blue eyes shine with something like desperation.

“You can’t pull away from me. You can’t—you need to _talk_ to me, Ron.”

“I know.” He swallows, his throat flexing. “I don’t—I don’t know what to say.”

She steps back from him and in her mind, she does the same. Pulls out. Tries to survey the situation, look back weeks, maybe months. She sees the flash of their first kiss, the way they fell into each other afterwards, clumsy and wanting. She thinks back to the strange pull that started it, the touch-and-go of her desire. And his bearings, his eagerness to grasp at her, after everything. But—

There were signs. There _are_ signs.

“I don’t think we should do this,” she says suddenly, surprising even herself. “Not if we can’t understand each other.”

Ron’s face twists up in some expression of shock and dismay. “Really?”

“Yes. Really.”

His face relaxes into a deep frown. He seems to think for a long stretch of time, but eventually, he nods, then looks away from her again.

“You’re my best friend,” she says, and she means it. She reaches for his hand and is awash with relief when he doesn’t pull that away, too.

He looks down at their fingers, and squeezes.

Harry is more devastated than either of them. Molly would probably be worse, but Hermione can’t think past the crooked lines of Harry’s expression when he finds out. Twisted in hurt. Disappointment.

“I don’t get it,” he says. “You guys were circling each other for years.”

She’s not sure what to tell him. That you could circle around someone for a lifetime and it’d still be all wrong? That what mattered most to her was that she knew she was capable of that kind of love, and not that it lasted?

“We’re still friends. It’s all OK.” Hermione tries for a smile. “It’s still us three.”

* * *

They keep training.

She duels Malfoy once. It’s ungainly and raw, a crude dance that ended a little too quickly with a hex to Malfoy’s chest. His face had flushed pink and he had stalked past the other trainees without looking back at her.

In each rotation afterwards, she’s paired with someone else. She considers, after a while, that Malfoy may be avoiding her. The thought triggers a strange mix of resentment and glee.

Beyond dueling, she studies. Quizzes Harry and Ron over breakfast each morning on Auror codes and procedures, then forces them to do the same for her. Garbuzov starts to roll her eyes when Hermione raises her hand in training lectures, or pulls out her stack of notecards from her bag.

After a month and a half, Dawlish pulls them all into the DMLE’s conference room and tells them it’s time they take partners.

“While these assignments are still considered tentative, and are meant to only be in place for the next three months of the training cycle, do not expect flexibility regarding assignment requests.”

Her hand shoots into the air. Dawlish narrows his eyes, then gives a curt nod.

“What’s the purpose of a tentative assignment if it’s not meant to be flexible?”

Dawlish looks at her and something in his expression shifts, darkens. There’s no mistaking the solemnity in his voice when he says: “To see if we can make it work.”

She knows not to hope for Harry. As well as they work together, him and Ron are an even better fit. She hopes for Cho, instead. They worked well together in the simulation, and Hermione _knows_ her — not nearly as much as she knows Harry and Ron, sure, but Cho’s a friend. She can have her back. Become close, even.

She’s already imagining what evenings at the Leaky Cauldron are going to be like with the fourth addition when her focus is pulled towards the group of trainees that’s swarmed around the parchment on the wall. She’s too far away to read the names, but she watches Harry and Ron light up and smile at each other, and knows she was right in her anticipation.

But then they turn back to the parchment and still, even as the other trainees move around them. Harry, after a beat, turns back to her and meets her gaze, his expression unreadable. Ron cranes his neck to find someone; his eyes narrow, and Hermione follows them across the small crowd to a shock of white-blond hair.

Malfoy looks at her and it’s different than a glance, different than a once-over. His eyes find her directly. They’re darker than usual and they flick away almost immediately, as quickly as he strides away from the tacked parchment and out of the room.

Her heartbeat jumps to her throat. She stumbles forward, pushes past the other trainees without caring where her elbows land. She needs to see, she needs to know why he looked at her like that—

Halfway down the list of trainee partner assignments, she finds her name:

_Granger, H. and Malfoy, D._


	3. malum consilium quod mutari non potest

_bad is the plan that cannot change._

* * *

Hermione has a plan.

Hermione always has a plan.

This one goes as follows:

She pulls threads apart from the inside. This was always part of some plan, from the moment she saw Criminger unsheath his too-white smile, but now it’s in a different place. Now it’s on level two of the Ministry, with its clean black marble and gilded trim. It’s in the department that promises more fight, that presses the white-hot dance of combative magic. It’s by Harry and Ron’s side.

She’d thought that she’d have a starting point, once training ramped up into partner assignments. Once they started working beyond the confines of the office, beyond their small conferences that more resembled classes than meetings.

This isn’t a starting point. It’s a condemnation.

“You had to have expected me to have some sort of objection.”

Robards pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers and lets out a heavy, long-suffering sigh.

“There has to be someone else,” she says. “There are are twenty-six in the program—”

“Listen. I understand the three of you are close—”

“That’s not what this is about,” she interjects quickly, fiercely. “I don’t need Harry and Ron, and I certainly didn’t expect to be paired with either of them.”

Robards leans back in his chair and seems to consider her for a moment, his eyes flicking across her face as if in hope of finding some sort of give within her expression.

“What about Nott? Why isn’t _he_ paired with Malfoy?”

“They’re both Marked,” Robards responds. “That—it wouldn’t work. Surely you can understand that, Miss Granger.”

She can. She does. But it doesn’t do much to alleviate her desperation.

“Please.” She’s surprised by the urgency that makes its way into her voice. “Anyone but Malfoy.”

Robards frowns, and then his gaze abruptly darts past her. Over her shoulder.

She feels the twinge of worry before she understands where it’s coming from. She pauses, turns in her seat to look at the entrance to his office.

All she sees is the blur of the edge of his robes, his white-blond hair, as Malfoy hurries away from the door.

* * *

There’s a booth at the Leaky Cauldron they’ve claimed as their own. Every Friday evening it’s vacant when they arrive, Flooing in together from the Ministry.

Hermione’s used to sitting by Ron’s side. She slides in next to him on instinct, catching Harry’s eye across from her as she does so. She’s not going to switch sides, now. There’s enough space between the two of them, and she can only feel the edges of the warmth from his body.

“So,” she starts.

“Merlin, ‘Mione,” Ron says. “What are you going to do?”

She folds her hands together on top of the table, doing her best to relax but undoubtedly coming off uptight anyways. “I’ve already talked to Robards. It’s—they’re not going to change it.”

“It’s not a permanent assignment,” Harry says, a hopeful edge to his voice. “It’s all tentative for—”

“For three months,” Hermione finishes for him. “Three _months.”_

He grimaces. “Yeah, that’s.” Clears his throat. “That’s a lot.”

“I don’t like it,” Ron announces. “You know they just saddled him with her because she’s—” he pauses, and his cheeks darken a little, “—because she’s so good. They might be thinking she can whip him into shape. Or something.”

“That won’t be happening,” she says.

Ron sniffs and leans forward in his seat, eager to press the subject. “Do we even know yet why him and Nott got shoehorned in? I mean, just a few months ago they were both on _trial._ That’s not Auror material, right?”

Hermione feels the beginnings of something stir within her chest. Something like trepidity.

“I always thought Malfoy wanted to do something political,” Harry offers. “I thought he’d go for the Wizengamot, you know. Something like that.”

“His dad was one of the School Governors, right? I mean, he couldn’t have followed in his footsteps? It would have gotten him out of our way.”

She curls her fingers around the booth’s seat cushion and presses. Tries to name the feeling, so she can better drive it away.

Ron brings his hands up and starts gesturing as he speaks. “I don’t know how ‘Mione’s going to _put up_ with it.”

“I’m going to grab us drinks,” she says suddenly, sliding out from the booth. Harry and Ron only glance over. They continue talking as she walks away.

Hermione orders three meads and leans against the bar’s counter, waiting. She can catch snippets of other patron’s conversations and she tries to follow them, chase sense through fragments of words. There are some things she’s trying not to let herself think.

_Do we even know yet why him and Nott got shoehorned in?_

Shoehorned in.

They were an abrupt upheaval. An interruption.

And Dawlish had carried them into the program as if they were necessities. Like finding their spots within the program was an urgent matter.

And now…

Hermione feels something else — indignation, maybe — because now, she’s saddled with that interruption. Every chance she gets to move forward, there’s something new to hold her back.

This something new is _Malfoy,_ of all things.

“—the Arrows haven’t gotten their checking down—”

“—no, mate, you’ve got to go to Moribund’s if you’re looking for shite like that—”

Hermione lets her head hang forward, bolstered by the spread of her forearms against the counter. _Malfoy._

She doesn’t care anymore, that they were all so young while everything happened. She was a kid but she had made her choices. She had made the _right_ ones.

Malfoy had chosen, too. And he’d done it all wrong.

She can’t be expected to get past that.

Three glasses are slid across the counter towards her. She tucks one into the crook of her elbow, pressing it in place against her ribs, while she carries the other two. Halfway on her way back to their booth, she stumbles. One foot knocks into the other and as she tries to right herself, the glass between her arm and chest tips, and her shirt is soaked through with sticky mead.

* * *

The parchment between her fingers is coarse and dry. She curls it up, around the pad of her thumb, over and over again until the corner is permanently warped. It’s all she’s been able to do for the past fifteen minutes. Fiddle with the parchment, and look at the clock.

It’s a quarter past ten. He’s late.

She’s not sure what she expected.

When Malfoy finally walks into the DMLE, he does so by Nott’s side. Both of them look strung out and tousled, wearing unfastened robes and expressions of detached indifference. The splinter off from each other, Nott undoubtedly going to find Cho. Hermione can’t help but think Cho got the better end of the deal with partner assignments.

She stands up, without really knowing why. Malfoy takes his time approaching her.

Hermione has no greetings, and no energy to try for them. Instead, she pushes the parchment across the surface of the desk. “It’s our first assignment.”

Malfoy arches an eyebrow, lifting the parchment up and bringing it close to his face. After a beat, he frowns. Drops it back onto the desk. “It’s a list of chores,” he says derisively.

“Assigned chores,” Hermione says. “We need to—”

Malfoy turns around and begins to walk away from her.

 _“Malfoy,”_ she says, exasperated. “What are you doing?”

He swivels neatly around to look back at her. “No worries, Granger. I’ll get done what I need to get done today.”

“We need to do these things together,” she counters.

Malfoy glances back down at the parchment, then back up to her. He flashes her a smile that’s sickly cold and glinting. “I think you’ve got it under control.”

He turns around again. Walks away.

Hermione sits back down at the desk, and pulls the parchment towards herself.

She stays late.

The Ministry’s library has no accessible clocks, so she has to cast a Tempus to realize how much time has gotten away from her.

After Malfoy disappeared to do who-knows-what, she began a methodical approach to every task she could tackle alone. She’s worked through twenty different departmental forms and twice as many case files. The work she’s doing is glorified secretarial labor.

She’s tired. _She’s exhausted._

She hooks her bag around her shoulder and finally makes her way out of the stacks, out of the library. The lifts aren’t far on this floor. She waits in the bleak, unnerving silence of the Ministry after-hours until the doors open and she can step inside.

As she turns around, a hand appears and stops the closing doors to the lift, and a man suddenly sidles in beside her. The doors fasten shut behind him and the lift jerks into motion.

Hermione glances at the stranger and has to do a double-take. He’s too familiar. The dry, unkempt hair, dragged back into a low ponytail. The crooked arch of his nose. One of his hands is gloved, the fabric cut off and frayed at the knuckles. His fingers play with the ratty ends of his scarf as he leans against the wall of the lift, eyeing her. Casual. Cavalier.

He smells like smoke and musk.

The full brunt of the realization hits her like a train.

“You,” she says, both in accusation and discovery. Her hand starts to inch towards the bag slung around her shoulder where her wand is safely sheathed.

Scabior tilts his head towards her and smiles.

“I ‘ave a feeling I wasn’t meant to run into you, love.”

She’s racking her brain for his trial. She sat through so many of them — but she’s unable to conjure any image of his face. Not in the Wizengamot courtroom, not clasped within fetters. Surely she spoke against him? Told the story of the chase through the trees, of Malfoy Manor? _Now, we won’t be forgetting who actually caught them, I ‘ope._

But there were so many trials, so many villains. So many months of lumbering through the aftershocks of the war.

Her mind clears a little. Whether she can recall his trial or not, he’s here. He’s standing casually in a Ministry lift, seemingly without any tangible concern of being found out. He’s here and he’s _free_.

“What are you doing here?” she demands.

“I ‘ad business,” he replies, and then takes a step towards her.

Hermione steps back. The lift gives a faint jerk and her back hits its wall, a dull thud against the metal paneling.

She barely registers the doors sliding open, the bell-ding announcing their arrival to the first floor.

The corners of Scabior’s mouth lift. “See you around, beautiful.”

And then he’s sliding out from the lift, disappearing around the corner of its open doors.

Hermione exhales. Raises a shaky hand to her collarbone and presses down, as if it will ground her. If her thoughts were disordered when she first recognized him, they’re reeling now.

The bell of the lift rings once — a warning — and that’s when the urgency finally strikes within her, and she launches herself out into the first floor of the Ministry.

“Wait!”

She sees the silhouette of Scabior, immersed in the green flames of one of the stone niches, and then he’s gone. Flooed who-knows-where.

She turns at the sound of footsteps behind her. It’s Malfoy, walking calmly across the black marble, moving in the same direction of the Floo alcoves.

She doesn’t care why he’s here so late. She doesn’t wonder at what he’s spent the day doing. She’s only relieved that it’s _someone else._

“Malfoy,” she says breathlessly.

“Granger.” Malfoy doesn’t look at her. He keeps walking, barely brushing by her side.

“Malfoy, _stop._ There was — there was a _Snatcher_ in the lift.”

He stills. “Oh? What’d you do? Ask him to be your partner?” he asks lightly. He turns his head and slants his gaze over his shoulder, sharp and dark towards her. _“Anyone but Malfoy,_ right?”

Hermione opens and closes her mouth, several times over. She’s at a loss. All her urgency has dissipated, has been blown away like a snuffed-out candle, just like that.

“See you tomorrow, Granger,” Malfoy says, and then walks away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! The next chapter will be much longer. I'm going to try to keep a schedule so that I can update regularly on Sundays. <3


	4. cineri gloria sera est

_glory paid to ashes comes too late._

* * *

Draco Malfoy, in truth, had been going to see Robard’s for the same reason.

And, _in truth,_ the same words had been waiting at the edge of his lips.

_Anyone but Granger._

Furthermore — yes, _in truth_ — he had been relieved to find Granger fighting the cause for him. Relieved to know she felt the same.

But thinking about the situation abstractly and actually hearing Granger say those words — _“Anyone but Malfoy.”_ — were two completely different monsters. Everytime the memory flits across his mind — and it does so now, triggered by nothing, unwelcome in the hiss of the flames — he winces.

The fire has been burning for an hour. He sits too close to it, the skin of his arms and neck uncomfortably warm, turning pink in the heated air.

The last letter. He runs a finger down the fold of the parchment, across the wax seal.

And then he throws it into the flames, unopened.

“Again?”

Draco stiffens where he sits on the hearth. He doesn’t need to turn around. It’s a shared space, but the presence is an irritating disruption all the same. Irritating — and familiar. “Do you have to say something every time?”

He hears the shuffle of Theo behind him, of him settling onto their sofa, tufted in chenille and glaring emerald green. He can picture the careful expression he’s wearing without needing to turn around.

“Well, you’re so dramatic every time,” Theo replies easily. “Just cast an Incendio and be done with it.”

Draco thinks that may be more dramatic — stacking the letters into a small bank and using magic to dispatch them. He thinks that’s more of a show. More effort than they’re worth.

“Or, you know,” Theo says. “Open them. Read them.”

He could laugh at that. He doesn’t, but — he _could_. Theo knows him better than this. This display isn’t for theatrics. It’s not a display at all. And Theo — he’s known Draco long and well enough to recognize an inevitability when he sees one. All the fundamental cogs in his character, he can identify, can name.

And Draco Malfoy burns his burdens.

“I think we could use them.”

He finally turns around, away from the fire. _“What?”_

“We both have questions.” Theo shrugs indifferently. There’s still an uneasy edge to the gesture. “Don’t you think your parents would—”

“Stop. You can stop that thought right there, Nott.”

Theo cocks his head to the side, arching an eyebrow. “Nott, huh?”

“We’re not asking them anything,” Draco continues. “It’s not enough. This isn’t enough for… _that.”_

Theo sighs. Stands up, brushing at his legs like he’s dusting the exchange away. “Right. OK. Are you coming, then?”

“Coming?” He pauses, turns back towards the hearth, and waits for the realization to arrive. Theo waits, too.

When, moments later, the awareness hits him like a train, he whirls back around. Fixes Theo with a firm glare. “No. Absolutely not.”

Draco goes.

His aversion isn’t based in the socialization, necessarily. He knows how to fraternize. He’s got a long list of skills in the art of charming.

Skills that balk in the face of people who — put plainly — just _do not_ like him.

Parkinson Place reminds him too much of the Manor. It’s got the same spired facade, the same marbled travertine, the same verdant shrubbery lining the walls like lace trim. Standing in front of the ebony-paneled doors feels achingly similar to standing in front of the caged lift’s entrance to the Wizengamot courtroom, all those months ago.

The doors swing open, charmed to swivel cleanly and in tandem, and Pansy appears before them both, her hair cut significantly shorter than when he’d seen her last, her dress’s neckline dipping low and its sleeves flouncing around her delicate arms, sheer and tinted blue.

“Theo!” she says, smiling, and then her gaze slides to where Draco stands and her red lips press together in a flat line. “Draco.”

Draco nods at her. It’s as warm of a welcome as he was expecting, really.

She looks back to Theo and reorganizes her smile. “Well, then. Come on in.”

Inside, the plasterwork of the walls stretches down every hallway, interrupted only by flickering sconces. Imagery of vines and roses, fronds and geometric carvings bordering damask wallpaper. Pansy’s heels snap against the parqueted floors, a sharp rhythm to follow, while Draco all but drags his feet.

They turn into a drawing room, warmly-lit, where other guests are already lounging. Zabini sits in a wing-back chair closest to the fireplace. Goyle and Bulstrode sit together on a velvet chaise.

“Malfoy, Nott,” Zabini drawls, twirling the stem of a glass between his finger. “Pansy? Really? You invited the Bobbies?”

“I did.” Pansy dips between the furniture, reaching for a dark bottle on a glass and lifting it neatly into the air. “Wine, Theo? Draco? It’s Elf-made.”

He wants to take a glass, to sit next to Theo on one of the Parkinsons's exorbitantly expensive ottomans. He wants to have the fire at his feet and be able to think of it as something other than a way to raze. He wants to look Goyle, Bulstrode, Zabini — _Pansy_ — in the eye.

Draco says, “I need a little more air first.”

And he leaves the drawing room.

He knows his way around. He finds a pair of glass doors and steps out onto one of the many colonnades in just the matter of a few turns, of several hurried steps. It’s already dusk. The stone of the grand house glows nearly white against the muted sky, and Draco has to close his eyes. He wants to stop looking at it. He wants to stop looking at _anything._

He gets one full minute of peace before the footsteps sound out behind him, and the glass doors he hasn’t closed creak open further. “Draco.”

He opens his eyes. Pivots on his feet. “Pansy.”

She’s crossed her arms, propping herself against the stone doorframe and settling one ankle delicately in front of the other. “Do you have answers for me, yet?”

Draco blinks. “What?”

“Goyle still flinches when I light a fire,” she says lightly, though he can tell by the flash of her stare that her mood is anything but.

“Don’t tell me he’s been _staying_ with you—”

“Millie wakes up screaming,” she interrupts. “She’s not even one of us with the Mark, Draco, and she still has more nightmares than she knows what to do with.”

Draco stills. He’s not sure what to do with that information. Because — _Bulstrode?_ Really?

“My parents aren’t ever coming back from Portugal. They write me every week, begging me to follow them,” she continues, now looking indifferently at her pointed nails. “I don’t. Because sometimes I think it—” She pauses. Shakes her head, smiling a little to herself like she’s in on a joke that he’s unaware of. “—I think it still _itches,_ you know? I think it’s moving again and I break out in so much sweat I have to excuse myself from whatever I’m doing. And they wouldn’t — they wouldn’t react like that. I don’t, because I got spat on in _Muggle_ London yesterday. There are people who hate me _everywhere.”_ She straightens herself, pushing off of the doorframe, standing tall and cavalier. Completely Pansy. “And you and Theo. You guys are _Aurors,_ and I couldn’t even get a fucking Groundskeeper gig if I tried.”

Draco feels his neck start to warm, and he knows he’s flushing red. Like he’s still sitting in front of the fire. “This wasn’t what I wanted, either.”

“Theo told me you were partnered with Granger,” she says. “You think it’s enough, saying it’s not what you _wanted?_ I want to know _why.”_

“Where are your problems with Theo, then?”

Pansy laughs. Then she turns around smoothly, starts walking back into the flickering corridor of her family’s mansion, and says over her shoulder, “You’re an arsehole, Draco.”

Draco turns back to the sky, the expanse of the Parkinson grounds. It’s too large. Too full of the same wards, the same kind of magic brimming at the Manor.

So he Apparates home.

* * *

In truth, Draco thinks about Granger more than he’d like to.

It’s a strange game he’s playing, trying to avoid her. Not just her, but Theo’s questions. Potter and Weasley’s catty glances. The thoughts — _his_ thoughts — reckless and fierce.

He’s got a lake in his mind as still as a sheet of glass. It only ripples when something’s lowered into it. That lasts a few minutes — minutes of him watching the object sink low enough that the green-blue water swallows it whole, pulls it deep to where it can’t be seen from the surface. Minutes of those ripples, breakers like rolling billows, of him breathing in their wake. Until they’re gone. Until it’s still once more.

He catches Dawlish’s eye as he enters the office. The man is always partly red-faced, his jaw set at a sharp angle and his eyes glassy and blue, reminding Draco a little bit of reptile. Maybe some type of lizard.

Dawlish nods to him. Smiles.

It’s Granger he looks at next. She’s already got a scowl and he’s still halfway across the room from her.

“Good morning,” he says when he’s close enough.

She’s got a binder tucked in the crook of one arm. He watches her fingers flex tight around its edge. “The list—” she begins, but Draco’s not ready yet. He’s not prepared.

“I’m going to spar with Theo,” he interrupts, already moving to walk past her.

“Nott’s not your partner, Malfoy. And I think—”

 _“I_ think you’ll manage today.”

He catches one last look at her before keeps walking. Her shirt buttoned up to the collar, her hair pulled back in a haphazard bun. In his head, he takes those colors — the tawny skin, the hair that catches the light, that makes the fluorescents of the DMLE look delicate — and he dunks them into the water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: i know there’s been a bit of a stretch of time between the last update and this one! there were some personal reasons that kept me from writing as productively as i would have liked. but my schedule should move forward regularly from now on! So, new chapters every sunday!! <3 if you’re following this story, thank you so, so much. i know it’s always a slow slog at first but i’m seriously so excited for what I have planned for this fic.
> 
> also! new edit can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_MBmTSACxY
> 
> check it out if you want :’) and thank you for reading!


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